Our company has about 200 phone numbers at 6 different states, spreading across the nation. But after auditing and digging through the bills, I would say about 10-15% of the lines are either inactive or being forwarded back to the main #. What we are trying to accomplished here is to cut cost, yet modernize the system at the same time.

According to the network admin: All locations currently have MPLS. The corporate office has a 50 Mbps cable connection and all branches don't have real internet connection. It setups in a way that all branches' traffic would go into MPLS, then back to the corporate office and out to the cable.

What is the most effective way to add VoIP into the current network? Any potential problems?
What if this is a company starting from scratch, what do you really recommend?
Do you really think we can cut cost yet modernize the system? Or are we too optimistic?

18 Replies

1st Post

The bandwidth will be the long pole in the tent. This will be the limiting factor for quality and consistency.

There are a number of ways to go about the application. We have found success in many similar deployments by using a robust HBX platform that gives you the user complete control of routing and call flow.

This is truly the easiest way to manage the application.

With that many users are you doing any type of dialer products/ short duration calling? Are there any analytic capturing requirements?

MPLS is a good start, but you'll still need to setup complete end to end QoS for the voice if you want to converge everything to the HQ.

And of course do you have MPLS coming in on the 50mbs cable.in the first place..

So you may need a standard BRI coming in and then distribute out over the mpls.

I'd talk to some local suppliers - can recommend Comresusa.com over in Fort Lauderdale - and see what sort of kit pricing you are still talking about, and what sort of resilience you need. If a hurricane hits and knocks out HQ how would that affect the other sites and their ability to function for example

The bandwidth will be the long pole in the tent. This will be the limiting factor for quality and consistency.

The Corporate has 2xT1 to the MPLS; and the branches has T1. We do expect to beef up the bandwidth when going VoIP. And might essentially replace the cable with something better.

There are a number of ways to go about the application. We have found success in many similar deployments by using a robust HBX platform that gives you the user complete control of routing and call flow.

What is HBX?

With that many users are you doing any type of dialer products/ short duration calling? Are there any analytic capturing requirements?

We are a medical imaging company, so we have many remote locations doing medical scans. And each locations would have 3-5 staff with a few lines. So it adds up to that many numbers. The call duration do depends.
We don't have any type of analytic capturing requirements (at least not that I know of).

HPBX is a hosted or cloud based PBX. The PBX is hosted via internet in remote data center with bi-coastal redundancy. With the right platform you can dramatically reduce the set up cost and they are easy to maintain. The alternative would be an on site PBX which can be costly and require you to know all the ins and outs of the system including most all trouble shooting.

The HPBX solution is excellent for remote users as it provides the latest in unified communications and they can be located anywhere. An individual user will have a desk phone, smart phone app, soft phone for workstation. Plus, a whole suite of voice mail and communication management tools such content sharing, virtual meetings and integrated chat to name a few.

Are you uploading these scanned files to a central data base? Cloud storage?

The analytic features are great but really geared for high volume sale call center environments when monitoring performance and small tweaks in behaviors can drive greater margins. It sounds that your team are disparate professionals working individual functions not related directly to primarily hammering phones.

Best cost cutting is hosted phone systems, skype for business or IP-PBX. Yes i know no one takes this seriously skype for business really? Yes!

ive done it with companies with 200 employees and they love it. At first the CEO's are sceptical but once they figure out they dont need to be in every location for every meeting they dont want to attend they are happy as heck. Also just think of the hardware savings. No PBX, no backups, no worrying about pri this crap that. How much does your 50mb pipe of MPLS cost? probably a small fortune, now you can get a cheap business class cable at each location through comcast or cox and save another small fortune.

Now that im done ranting about skype business you should also look at IP based PBX's. they seems to work well for the clients i've set up and in addition its easy to set up as well. Hosted PBX really just saves headache cost of hardware because it usually slightly smaller or comparable in price, however i don't know how much your spending on systems/contractors.

Well you already have the right infrastructure built out. Hosted in this case is not going to be a huge cost saver for 200 end points. In fact over a ten year total cost of ownership the costs will be phenomenal. Given that you are looking to save money and have high call quality that is not reliant on the Internet for dial-tone and you have MPLS. I think a good start would be to see what the savings would be that you could achieve, by eliminating the satellite PBX phone lines and compare those savings to what a lease on a new system like a ShoreTel would be. Many times the savings may outweigh the costs for implementing new phones. In this case the switch to the new system becomes easy to work through management. If you would like some assistance looking into these figures we would be glad to assist you with that.

There are ways you can get a hosted solution and still cut the cost. Some hosted providers including us do not charge by the endpoint we charge for the concurrent call into the network. So you are only paying for what you are using vs. paying for the user/privilege to connect to the HPBX. You do need to consider the bandwidth and provide for QoS in the router to ensure good voice quality. In addition you would want to make sure if you do go to a VoIP solution and hosted that the provider is using a G711 codec that will provide the best quality and be calls with no compression. We have built our model for the very reason that larger installations that want to move to hosted are subjected to the user costing so we eliminated it.

Sam what type of phone system are you currently using? Do you intend to use the currently inactivated lines and does your company intend to grow beyond the current 200 employees? And what percentenage of the current workforce across the six locations need to work in a 'mobile' manner?

I can hook you up with one of our engineers if you need help/guidance.

MPLS is a good start, but you'll still need to setup complete end to end QoS for the voice if you want to converge everything to the HQ.Yes, QoS is a "must" on our list if we do VoIP on the MPLS.

And of course do you have MPLS coming in on the 50mbs cable.in the first place.. So you may need a standard BRI coming in and then distribute out over the mpls.I probably wasn't too clear on our current network. The 50 Mbps cable doesn't go directly into the MPLS. I drew something up quickly in Visio, hope this diagram might clear that up a bit.
If the price is reasonable, we might actually do a secure Internet access via the MPLS and drop that cable down to email/exchange only.
And if we really go VoIP, then we might have to beef up the Billing / Call Center to a 3 Mbps bonded T1.

Are you uploading these scanned files to a central data base? Cloud storage?Yes, we do have a "cloud" storage database for images.

The analytic features are great but really geared for high volume sale call center environments when monitoring performance and small tweaks in behaviors can drive greater margins. It sounds that your team are disparate professionals working individual functions not related directly to primarily hammering phones.You're right. The analytic features are not that important, but it would nice for us to know how many calls do we get, how many minutes do the staff spent on the phone, where the calls come from / to.

Best cost cutting is hosted phone systems, skype for business or IP-PBX. Yes i know no one takes this seriously skype for business really? Yes!
ive done it with companies with 200 employees and they love it. At first the CEO's are sceptical but once they figure out they dont need to be in every location for every meeting they dont want to attend they are happy as heck. Also just think of the hardware savings. No PBX, no backups, no worrying about pri this crap that.We did talk about software phones, but training would be a nightmare (with that amount of locations spread out across states)

How much does your 50mb pipe of MPLS cost? probably a small fortune, now you can get a cheap business class cable at each location through comcast or cox and save another small fortune.We don't have a 50 Mbps MPLS pipe; only the cable is 50 Mbps. (See attached figure for clarification) And we can't eliminate that MPLS due to legal reasons.

Hosted PBX really just saves headache cost of hardware because it usually slightly smaller or comparable in price, however i don't know how much your spending on systems/contractors.That's what I thought. The upfront hardware cost could be expensive for non-hosted PBX. I am also afraid on issues such as: the ability (or more the inability) to hardware upgrade, redundancy (after all, we do have hurricanes in FL; if a hurricane wipes out/power down the IP-PBX, all remote sites' phone would be down, right?), trouble-shooting / downtime.

"What if this is a company starting from scratch, what do you really recommend?"
PM me and let me tell you about a couple of options.Can't PM on Spiceworks (yet). "Sorry, you cannot send new private messages to other users yet!"
Any other ways to contact you?

There are ways you can get a hosted solution and still cut the cost. Some hosted providers including us do not charge by the endpoint we charge for the concurrent call into the network. So you are only paying for what you are using vs. paying for the user/privilege to connect to the HPBX. You do need to consider the bandwidth and provide for QoS in the router to ensure good voice quality. In addition you would want to make sure if you do go to a VoIP solution and hosted that the provider is using a G711 codec that will provide the best quality and be calls with no compression. We have built our model for the very reason that larger installations that want to move to hosted are subjected to the user costing so we eliminated it.We estimated between 200-250 numbers with about 80 concurrent calls. We think going VoIP would cut down the number of trunk and slowly eliminate the unused line, hence saving money. But how much saving really depends on how much the new VoIP costs...

Sam what type of phone system are you currently using?My network admin told me "FX PBX." Is that what you asking?

Do you intend to use the currently inactivated lines and does your company intend to grow beyond the current 200 employees?Due to legal reasons, we might have to first monitor if those inactivated lines have incoming call before discontinuing them.
Right now, those lines are on unlimited analog. The phone companies do not have a log, and we can't just cut those lines right at this moment.
Do we intend to grow? My answer has to be a "Yes." But that is totally outside my "jurisdiction."

And what percentenage of the current workforce across the six locations need to work in a 'mobile' manner?According to the latest audit, we have 70 active cell phones. No easy way for me to determine how many of those 70 don't have a desk phone...

Bandwidth is the major consideration, we have two remote offices, one with FIOS and one with Business Class DSL. MPLS was too expensive for us, so we setup a VPN tunnel between firewalls over the public internet and haven't had any problems. This setup allows the remote offices to access their email and internet services separate from the VOIP system. Our exchange email is outsourced and we use RPC over HTTPS to access it. We have had a Shoretel VOIP system in place for 5 years with this setup and haven't had any problems.

I can get you some numbers based on the remote sites and 80 concurrent calls in a fully hosted environment so we are monitoring and maintaining 24/7/365. Just let me know how to reach you, I can be reached at rick@voicecarrier.com.

Please excuse me if I've missed something. I see much discussion of your network and even more discussion about possible replacements for your current voice services but I'm missing information describing your current voice services at each location.

The savings you will enjoy if you migrate to a hosted VoIP solution, how well it may or may not fit into your existing infrastructure and the effects (positive and negative) of such a migration on your user experience depend in large part on your starting point. It sounds like you are considering VoIP but I can't figure out what the VoIP will be replacing.

Is it possible to detail your existing voice services at each location (I'm assuming your current solution is not hosted VoIP) ? Circuit switched ? VoIP ? Premises-based following the star topology ? Current voice technology ? Type of end point equipment (homogenous or an eclectic variety) ? etc. etc.

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